System and method for testing software reliability over extended time

Abstract

A system and method for accelerated reliability testing of computer system software components over prolonged periods of time provides a uniform, extensible, reporting framework that includes a plurality of reporting clients, at least one controller. The system and method are adaptable for operation over a dedicated intranet as well as the Internet. It provides for tracking the reliability of system components and logs failures of varying severity that may be expected to occur over time. This data is useful, among other things, for estimating mean time between failures for software being tested and expected support costs. This information is particularly useful in providing a reliability measure where multiple independently developed software modules are expected to function together. The testing includes random scheduling of tasks and sleep intervals reflecting expected usage patterns, but at a faster pace to efficiently sample the state space to detect sequence of operations that are likely to result in failures in actual use. The method and system include using pseudo-random numbers to schedule the tasks and provides for storage of random numbers to facilitate reproducing failures, for instance for debugging efforts.